


The Witcher and his Bard

by kyatrathequeen



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski
Genre: Fluff, I Will Go Down With This Ship, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, M/M, No Smut, Oneshot, geralt and jaskier arguing and being funny, might expand this further later, not super dramatic, very chill tbh, witcher one shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-21
Updated: 2020-01-21
Packaged: 2021-02-19 08:36:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22341427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyatrathequeen/pseuds/kyatrathequeen
Summary: A piercing shriek split the air, and Geralt jumped up from his spot by the fire, unsheathing his sword in one fluid motion. He should have known better than to let that moron of a bard go for water by himself, but he’d thought even Jaskier couldn’t get into too much trouble in these woods. Cursing under his breath, he shot off in the direction of the scream.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 6
Kudos: 188





	The Witcher and his Bard

A piercing shriek split the air, and Geralt jumped up from his spot by the fire, unsheathing his sword in one fluid motion. He should have known better than to let that moron of a bard go for water by himself, but he’d thought even Jaskier couldn’t get into too much trouble in these woods. Cursing under his breath, he shot off in the direction of the scream.   
“Jaskier!” He yelled. “Jaskier answer me!” He spotted the bard’s bright clothing through the trees and came bursting into a small clearing. Jaskier was kneeling down at the opposite side of the clearing, hunched over. He strode over to him, grabbing his shoulder and wrenching him around. Jaskier yelped, then relaxed slightly as he recognized him. Geralt looked him up and down, but saw no blood or obvious injuries. “Jaskier, what the hell-“  
Jaskier cut him off. “Look! Aren’t they adorable!” Geralt glanced where he was pointing. There, curled up in a nest in the grass, were what appeared to be three small, rather odd looking, hedgehogs, their spines curiously long and soft. Apparently the shrieking had been out of delight.   
“…Fuck” Geralt intoned grimly, pulling Jaskier bodily to his feet. “Time to leave.”  
“What? But surely they’re harmless Geralt! I mean, look at them, their spines aren’t even sharp!” Jaskier laughed. “Don’t tell me the fearless Geralt is afraid of a few little hedgehogs!”   
Geralt started pulling him away, backing out of the clearing with his sword up. “Those aren’t hedgehogs.”  
“What? Then what are they?” Jaskier wriggled in his grasp, but Geralt just tightened his grip slightly. “Geralt, will you let go of me! There’s no danger here!”  
There was a rustling noise from the opposite side of the clearing and what appeared to be a solid mass of spines stepped into the clearing, the tallest about five feet tall. Geralt froze. They could still make it out without getting spines stuck in them, they both just needed to be quiet and patient. Echinopsae weren’t particularly observant, and if they moved carefully it wouldn’t even notice them.   
Predictably enough, Jaskier chose that moment to let out a startled shriek of “Geralt! What is that!?” Good god, could the man not keep his mouth shut for five seconds?  
The echinopsa immediately placed itself between its babies and them and shot three spines at them. Geralt moved to the side, dragging Jaskier out of the path of the spines as well, and shoved him away.  
“Run!”  
Jaskier stumbled “But what about-“   
“I said” Geralt growled “to RUN.” The echinopsa shot another spine, and he deflected it off his sword, moving backwards. Thankfully, he heard the panicked crashing that indicated Jaskier was finally listening to him. He had no desire to kill something that was just attempting to protect its children, especially since echinopsae weren’t particularly aggressive animals in normal circumstances. However, it was going to be difficult for both of them to get away unhurt if he was constantly trying to cover Jaskier’s ass. He kept a slow pace backwards, deflecting and dodging the spines being shot at him, until he was out of range and could make a break for it. Fortunately, he was not followed, the echinopsa being more concerned for its children than killing him. Unfortunately, he miscalculated the echinopsa’s firing range.   
He limped his way back to the clearing where they had set up camp, cursing his luck and the echinopsa’s unusual ability to shoot its spines over a long distance directly into his calf. It did not improve his mood when he ran into Jaskier, apparently moving back towards danger. Honestly the man had the worst survival instincts out of anyone he’d tried to keep from dying. “What the fuck are you doing?”  
“Ah, well…” Jaskier struck a grand pose, his god-forsaken lute, as always, held in front of him. “In order to compose my ballads about your battles, I must actually know what happens in them, and since you won’t usually tell me anything, that means I must put myself in mortal danger for the sake of my art.”  
Geralt sighed. He didn’t even bother arguing with the man anymore. It was like trying to argue with a mosquito that had decided that directly next to your ear was its new favorite place to be. “Well you’re going to be singing a ballad about an idiot bard who got Geralt of Rivea shot in the leg with an echinopsa spine.”  
Jaskier appeared to notice the rather large bits of spine sticking out of his calf for the first time. “That’s very….unheroic, don’t you think?” He frowned thoughtfully, strumming absentmindedly on his lute as Geralt made his painful way back to camp. “Perhaps if you got shot in the chest, almost died, and were nursed back to health by your faithful bard…..” Jaskier trailed off. “At least tell me you killed the thing.”   
“No.” Geralt replied shortly. They’d made it back to camp and he sat down heavily on a log next to their now dwindling camp fire, carefully keeping his impaled leg out at an angle to avoid further damage or pain. Echinopsa spines weren’t barbed, but he almost wished they were. They tended to shatter on impact, leaving lots of little spine bits to work their way into muscle tissue. He needed to get every single one out or it would bother him for the rest of his life, Witcher healing abilities or no. Geralt began to carefully pick out pieces of the echinopsa’s spine from his leg. Jaskier wrinkled his nose and then began to strum on his lute, wearing his “I am composing now, and I will be singing the same bits of song over and over for the next two weeks until you want to strangle me with your bare hands” face.   
“I will now tell you a tale of Geralt of Rivea, when he slew a-“ Jaskier broke off his singing. “What did you say that thing was called?”  
“It was an echinopsa” Geralt grunted “And I didn’t kill it”  
“echinopsa….echinopsa, what rhymes with echinopsa? Nothing! That’s what rhymes with echinopsa!” Jaskier groaned melodramatically. “Why can’t you fight things with easy names, like the striga. That was a nice, easy rhyming scheme, why can’t you fight another one of those?” He carried on without waiting for an answer. “Right! So you fought a ‘monster of spines’ that sounds much less clinical.”  
“You can rhyme ‘monster of spines’ but you can’t rhyme echinopsa?” Geralt queried dryly, pulling another spine bit out of his leg. “Some bard you are.”  
Jaskier gasped, one hand pressed to his chest. “Are you..insulting my rhyming abilities Geralt? I’ll have you know I have no problem with rhyming echinopsa, I simply thought that no one would know what that was, I mean it’s much more impressive if they actually know what the song is about, don’t you think? How do you expect me to help your image if no one even knows what it was you fought. Who, I ask you, WHO wants to hear the dramatic tale of how Geralt of Rivea fought a monster no one’s even heard of?”  
Geralt sighed. “Jaskier, shut up.”  
To his surprise, Jaskier actually stopped talking. He went back to strumming his lute and humming bits of melody, although that didn’t stop him from shooting occasional indignant glances at Geralt.   
For probably the hundredth time, Geralt wondered why this easily offended, colorful butterfly of a man chose to follow him around. Jaskier wasn’t actually stupid, and he seemed highly averse to pain and death. So why follow a man that chased both? He’d had a few people try and attach themselves to him before, but they’d always been more or less scared of him, and he’d been able to intimidate them into leaving or lose them fairly easily. Jaskier just kept on popping back up, like some kind of human jack-in-the-box. He seemed impossible to shake, and strangely enough, seemed mostly immune to intimidation from Geralt. He’d even tried actually punching him, the first time they’d met, in an attempt to convince Jaskier he was scary and not good to follow around. He hadn’t been able to bring himself to seriously injure the man, and maybe that was why Jaskier still hadn’t feared him.   
Whatever the reason, and although he would have refused to admit it even under the most vile torture, having some background noise wasn’t all that bad. It was even nice to have one person who didn’t reek of fear when they saw him, even if it came with the price of keeping a fragile human alive on his adventures. Geralt finished pulling the echinopsa’s spine bits out, bandaged up his leg, and stretched out on his bedroll. The sound of Jaskier’s muttered singing was oddly soothing as he drifted off to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> I know I pulled this monster from the video games and probably mangled it horribly, please don't yell at me about it.


End file.
